Monday, January 17, 2011

What have made them greater than the others? If you ask the question about The Beatles, I will answer you that it is because they had successfully absorbed people---they made people by part of them in contrast to just being engaged to them! And so did the other great things, such as Netscape, such as Yahoo, such as Google, such as Apple, such as Facebook, and Twitter.

Recently I was approached by a question: how do you think of this company? [I omit its name here, no intention to offend anybody, and it indeed does no matter to the topic of the post either.] It was a name with much hype right now. Many people think it is great; but is it truly? Will it be such as, the next Facebook, for instance?

When The Beatles were popular, their music had been part of the life of the fans. The music led people think more about their own and the life they lived. It improved the human wisdom. It was not just that the music was touching. By contrast, the music lead to more human thinking. And human thinking makes our society grow.

The same was done by those great inventions related to the Web. Netscape made people think more and led to the idea of competing on domain-name registrations. Yahoo made people think more and led to the idea of publishing business through portals and being indexed. Google made people think more and led to the idea of better advertisement through SEO. Apple made people think more and led to the idea that even a tiny enlightenment could be leveraged and be profitable. Facebook made people think more and led to the idea of being benefit and profitable through each other's social network. And, Twitter also made people think more and led to the idea that has revolutionarily updated the News industry.

So, what are the common character among these great of the greats? They make people think more, and they make people be smarter! They have enriched the whole human intelligence. They are not (or at least not only) tools. They are the human-wisdom generators.

On the other side, why aren't many the others great as these ones? Those the others might have once engaged people as well but did not encourage active human thinking as the great ones did. They want to be so "smart" that disclaim the "need" of think among their followers. Ironically, however, with no need of human thinking few new business could be born because of them. And thus they lose the ground to become great.